Chinese authorities put the finishing touch on artist provocateur Ai Weiwei’s latest performance art piece, ordering him to turn off four live webcams he had installed inside his own home in a wry effort to turn state surveillance on its head.

The webcams, set up in various locations around Mr. Ai’s already highly surveilled house in northern Beijing, began broadcasting live on the website weiweicam.com on April 2, a year to the day after the artist was apprehended at the Beijing airport in what would turn out to be a nearly three-month period of detention and interrogation by state security agents.

On Wednesday, less than 48 hours after Mr. Ai announced the launch of the live feed, the cameras — one of which had been installed on the ceiling of his bedroom — went dark. “4 minutes ago the cameras have been shut down,” the artist wrote on his Twitter feed. “byebye to all the voyeurs.”

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Mr. Ai indicated to his Twitter followers on Wednesday that the decision to kill the cameras had not been his, later telling CNN and other media outlets that the cameras had been turned off on orders from public security officials.

The artist told the UK’s Guardian newspaper earlier in the week that he had set up the cameras to allay fans’ concerns over his safety and as a gift to public security forces “because they follow me, tap my phone and do what is necessary to get ‘secrets’ from me.”

Twitter

Before the cameras were shut off, fans, security officials and anyone else who happened to take an interest were treated to images of the rotund artist working at this computer, greeting visitors, walking through his courtyard and sleeping. Viewers also saw plenty of his cat. (See screenshots courtesy of Al-Jazeera here).

Mr. Ai said he’d originally intended to keep the cameras rolling for 81 days, the same length of time he was detained.

Mr. Ai was the highest profile of hundreds of dissidents and rights lawyers who were detained without public hearing or charges after online calls for a Jasmine Revolution in China began appearing online in February last year. He was released in June because, according to state media, he was seriously ill and had agreed to pay taxes he had allegedly evaded. Tax authorities last week denied Mr. Ai’s appeal of the 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) tax penalty levied against him after his release.

The Beijing Public Security Bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It’s fine for them to set up cameras to look at you, but it’s not fine for you to set up cameras to help them look at you,” one Twitter user wrote in Chinese after the cameras went down. “Absurd in the extreme.”

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